[ttd] giggling pears

"I thought you said it was this way?" a low voice hissed in the dark of a basement corridor.

JR peered around the corner and then looked Bren, his brows raised expectantly. It was past midnight and neither one of the boys could sleep and it was so late that they had started getting hungry again. JR always had sweets and treats in his trunk, courtesy of his hefty allowance and the family owl that dropped off homemade baked goods every other week, keeping him and his dormmates stocked up on cookies and pastries and biscuits. But, of course, they weren't in the mood for any of that so somehow they had gotten the idea in their heads that venturing into the kitchens would be a great plan.

Sure, it was after curfew and sure, they were technically supposed to be sleeping in their dorms, but the kitchen was close by and on the same floor. And even JR, who had an aversion to risk, could see that it seemed easy enough. Except now that they were both out here, his wand tip hidden in his hand so the light didn't get away their location in case any other prefects or professors were making rounds down here, they couldn't quite find their way to the kitchen.

"Which painting did they say it was? A dancing apple?" JR asked before he held up his wand to a painting beside him and the occupants, two knights and a jester, grumbled at the disturbance.

@Brendan de Havilland

“Just hold your Hippogriffs,” came the answering grumble. “Everything looks different in the dark.”

Last year, Bren never would have dreamed of breaking curfew and risking Filch’s wrath (or patrolling Prefects) to sneak down to the kitchens in the dead of night… but he wasn’t quite the same Bean now. A little older, a little less timid, a little more confident (having a girlfriend really had done wonders for him)… and a little more likely to agree to his more outgoing friends’ brilliant ideas, as a consequence. He’d always had difficulty turning down JR, though, so that at least was hardly out of the usual. Neither boy was keen on being reprimanded but Bren had always been hesitant to break rules in general, even if there was no chance at all he’d get caught.

But the plan had come together nonetheless: JR had heard of a few students that had successfully done it recently, and once Bren mentioned he knew where to go and how to get in (just last week, while they were working on an essay together, Patty had told him as she’d been surprised to learn that he didn’t know) there was no stopping it from going into motion.

“Patty said something about a bowl of fruit in the painting,” he replied, squinting into the dark corridor ahead of them, “and that there was a suit of armor right around the— hang on, that’s it!”
A beam of light had escaped from between JR’s fingers and bounced off of something shiny a short distance to their right, reflecting back at them. He paused for a moment to listen and, hearing nothing that alarmed him, illuminated his own wand and crept down the corridor, staying close to the wall. The paintings now seemed to be mostly of food – that had to mean they were getting close, right?

JR grumbled as Bean told him to hold on. He was hangry and as much as he had seemed confidently arrogant in the common room ten minutes ago, he was trying not to let his worries bother him now about being caught out after curfew. Plus going to the kitchens seemed like a secret that he had been long overdue in finding out about and he hated feeling left out of the loop. He couldn't help but wonder if Tomie knew about it though. The house elves would probably kick her out for taking all the food though..

"Bowl of fruit," the second year echoed as he held up his wand to another painting nearby where two kneazles, a gnome, and a niffler were all sat round a table playing what looked like poker. One of the kneazles hissed at him because of the light and JR frowned at them. Who even painted these things anyway? The thought was forgotten was Bean said he found the suit of armor.

He followed Bean toward the suit of armor and then glanced at each painting as they walked by. Galloping gargoyles running through a forest after a levitating piece of cake(?), then a painting of what looked like a good Sunday roast, an assortment of cakes and pastries that made his mouth water and he could almost smell the fresh scent of sugar and bread, a bowl of fruit, a knife chopping vegetables by itself on a cutting board, a fairy with a--- "Hey found it!" he whispered to his roommate as he did a double take and took a step back to face the painting. "We were supposed to make the apple laugh right?" he asked, trying to remember what the instructions were that they had overheard. "What would a piece of fruit even find funny..."

Bren had stopped beside the suit of armor, and had been looking further ahead down the corridor when JR whispered that he’d found the painting. Bren took a half-step back, felt the cold metal of the armor against his arm, and froze. If he knocked it over, the cat would be among the pixies both figuratively and literally: he and JR would be the hapless pixies, and Mrs. Norris would have them cornered in an instant with whatever beastly superpowers she seemed to have. And where Mrs. Norris was, Filch was never far behind…

The Second Year gulped, tentatively leaning away from the suit of armor. Another reason to avoid getting caught – he had plans with Shelby this weekend, and the staff seemed to love to give detentions on weekends for stuff like this (or so he’d heard). Anyways, she was practically a model student and never got in trouble; Bren was loath to disappoint her. That would certainly be an Erumpent in the room, having to explain why he couldn’t spend time with her this weekend without admitting that he’d gotten caught out-of-bed after hours and landed himself in detention over something silly…

“We were supposed to make the apple laugh, right?”

“Er… maybe? We need to make something laugh.”
Bren frowned, trying to remember what Patty had told him. She had said something about making one of the fruits laugh – but which one was it, and how?
“…D’you know any good jokes?”

"Not any that I think fruit would find funny," JR muttered. Maybe this was a bad idea. But he rubbed a hand over his stomach, thinking that he really needed to start stashing food like Tomie seemed to do.

"Tickle the pear, you buck idjit," a wizard with a heavy Irish accent whispered to him from a painting across the corridor. JR turned to look at the fellow, watching as the friend in the Irishman's portrait slapped him across the shoulder. "Ah, why did you tell 'em? It's funnier when they can't figure it out." The Irishman in the painting shrugged and then JR gave a similar shrug to his roommate.

With a why-not sort of expression, the Slytherin reached up to where the pear was leaning against the bowl and tickled. He wondered if this was some elaborate joke as nothing happened at first, but then the pear giggled and JR's gaze whipped to Bean's. A handle appeared moments later and JR finally grinned. "Weird, but at least we're in."

He grabbed the handle, swung open the door, and disappeared inside.

/end

“Does that really matter, though…?” he whispered back, suddenly wary as he looked from his friend to the unassuming bowl of fruit. The longer that they stood out in the corridor (with nothing to hide in or behind), the twitchier Bren felt.

And so he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of a new voice, grateful that he was no longer right next to the suit of armor because otherwise he surely would have knocked it over. It took him a moment to process that it was a bloke from one of the nearby paintings, such that he didn’t even have the presence of mind to be amused by their banter. In any case, Bren continued the train of shrugs and regarded the fruit bowl curiously.

“S’pose getting tickled usually does make you laugh…”

When the pear did just that after JR tried it, Bren’s eyes widened as they met his friend’s; magic was so weird but so cool at the same time. A relieved grin finally made its way onto his face as the pear turned into a large green door, and JR pulled it open.

“Thanks,” he whispered to the canvassed Irishman as he hurried after JR, closing the door quietly but firmly behind them.

[[ out! ]]